Bill McLean

Caren Miller was only 8 when her beloved mother, Beezie, died at the age of 29. But what the mother passed down to her daughter continues to impact lives positively decades later. “My mother gave me the gift of art,” Miller, a lifelong art teacher who grew up in Skokie, says from her seat at

Music pulsated Thaddeus Tukes’ childhood house in Hyde Park. His parents, Warren and Celeste, liked to play Gospel and old-school soul at their home in Chicago, as well as the occasional Motown song. “My parents fostered an appreciation for music when I was young,” recalls the 29-year-old Tukes, who still calls Hyde Park home. “I

United States Marine Corps Major and Military Instructor Pilot Keller Rongey has been all over the world since the age of 18, from the weeks he spent with a Rotary TABU (Towards A Better Understanding) contingent in Belfast, Northern Ireland, to overseeing the planning and execution of tactical sorties in support of operations in Northern

Six months after the September 11, 2001 attacks on U.S. soil, Gretchen Grad was in bed at her home in Glenview, unable to fall asleep one night. The fractured world concerned her. “I was thinking, ‘Maybe we could do something to help heal the world,’” Grad says. Her mind raced. “Something” turned into an bold

In 1996, as Highland Park High School’s varsity football captain and starting quarterback Michael Bonamarte IV was ordered to do something in a game for the first time in his career. Then-Giants head coach Jay Geerdes eyed Bonamarte on the sideline and told him, “Go out there, ‘Bones,’ and return the kickoff,” near the end